International studio (34.1908)

Claude Monet

group was in direst difficulties, Sisley represented
good humour, and Claude Monet always repre-
sented confidence in the future.
Now, not only would Monet never make con-
cessions—seeing that he was engaged in experi-
ments which absolutely debarred them—but he
made his case still worse with the public by two
fresh excursions which brought him to his final
stage. Just as the paintings of Manet had im-
pelled him to seek absolute simplicity in drawing
and modelling, so the Japanese prints over which
he had waxed enthusiastic during his visit to
Holland in 1870, made him paint henceforth in
none but the brightest, clearest harmonies, and
caused him to strive to make his palette of the
lightest possible description.
The third etape of Monet, after all these syn-
thetical researches, was for a change in the direc-
tion of analysis. Having mastered draughtsmanship
in its strongest and most concise form, and
captured colour so far as to succeed in rendering
aerial effects whether soft or striking, there re-
mained nothing for him to do but to study in its
subtlest forms that light which, in accord with the
season and the hour, ranges over the immense key-
board of optical sensations. One must certainly
regard as an exceptional adventure in art this
evolution from the artificial to the simple, and
again from the simple to the artificial, with the aid
—be it remembered—of the very elements of
simplicity.
In the prescribed space of a study such as this,
I am compelled to confine myself to a general
indication of the artist’s work, instead of making
a close examination of his yearly, his periodic
efforts. But in what follows we may perhaps
regard the works which come in for consideration
in the light of these general ideas I have attempted
to lay down.
As I remarked just now, each of these divers
phases furnished Claude Monet with an oppor-
tunity, or a succession of opportunities, to test his
energy; for each brought down upon him the
animosity of the critics and the derision of the
public. It must also be remarked that at that
time—close to the present in point of years, but
already quite remote in feeling—such art criticism
as counted was expressed in the language and after
the manner of the vaudeville; thus a pun, a more
or less witty remark, an ironic mot designed to
wound, took the place of serious discussion, even
that of any honest examination of an artist’s work.
The public for its part simply regarded matters of
art as a means of experiencing sensations pleasant

and conventional—as an amusement, in a word.
To-day everything is quite different; indeed there
is a tendency to go to extremes in the serious
discussion of work which itself is not always serious,
and the public, which has indulged in this occupa-
tion to an extraordinary extent, now shows such a
dread of making a mistake over some new Monet
that it is bound to commit errors in the opposite
direction.
It was therefore the critics of the little Boulevard
papers who warred against Claude Monet; they
too found the ironic word impressionism, which
since then has “come into its own” pretty com-
pletely. The word dates from 1874, the period
of the celebrated exhibition wherein were united
Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Cezanne, Guillau-
min, and Mme. Berthe Morizot, together with a
few artists such as Degas, de Nittis and Lepine,
who had nothing in common with what was styled
“ the new painting ” until a witty critic invented
the word impressionism on seeing a picture by Monet
entitled Impression : Soleil levant. Monet may thus
be said not only to have established the essential
formula of the School—which was destined to
become extremely numerous and to possess qualities
of the most diverse kinds—but also unintentionally
to have provided one of those striking labels which
become engraved on the memory of the crowd and
represent the difference between victory and defeat.
But summarised in this manner the story gives
no idea of the prodigies of will-power demanded of
Claude Monet to enable him to keep his head
above water during this period of fifteen years or
more. Not till 1886 or 1887 did the critics begin
to change their tone. By this time Monet had
gained new and enthusiastic defenders, who in
their turn took up the weapons used, when almost
alone against the multitude, by MM. Duranty
and Theodore Duret as writers ; M. Durand-
Ruel on the business side, and MM. de Bellio
and Caillebote as amateurs.
It was about this time too that Monet came upon
the final and typical idea which completes what I
have just said regarding his progress by successive
stages.
This idea offers a special justification of what I
have remarked about Monet and his devotion to
the air. As we all know, certain of the great
Japanese artists, whom the painter admired and
followed so ardently—notably Hokusai and Hiros-
highe—were in the habit of treating the same
motif in a series of plates, when that motif happened
to be varied, either by being taken from a different
point of view or at a different hour or season.
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